A bracing long drink of whiskey stretched with hard cider over ice — orchard sweetness cut by the grain spirit's backbone. Dry cider keeps it crisp and lightly tart, and the whiskey's warmth rises through the apple as the ice slowly loosens the glass.
Built · Highball · On the Rocks
build
Fill a highball glass with ice cubes.
add
Pour the whiskey over the ice.
top
Fill the balance of the glass with chilled hard (dry) cider.
stir
Stir gently with a barspoon to combine, then serve.
No one is recorded as inventing the Stone Fence; it was a common colonial American mix of a spirit and hard cider, with rum or applejack as the early base. Legend has the Green Mountain Boys under Ethan Allen fortifying themselves with it ahead of their 1775 assault on Fort Ticonderoga. Nineteenth-century bar guides later wrote it down — E. A. Simmons's The American Bar-Tender of 1874 paired apple whiskey with sweet cider, while an 1884 bar-keepers' handbook settled on whiskey and cider stirred over ice, distinguishing it from the Stone Wall, which swapped the cider for soda water.